Questions Arise Over Fox News Sole Anonymous Source Exonerating Jared Kushner
A Fox News story out Monday defended Jared Kushner against a number of reports alleging the senior White House adviser attempted to set up a secret backchannel with Russian officials.
The original Washington Post story — corroborated by The New York Times and other news outlets — reported that Kushner proposed establishing a secret backchannel with the Kremlin during a December meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Then came the Fox News story, published without a by-line, and the headline: “Jared Kushner didn’t suggest Russian communications channel in meeting, source says.”
The report, which was retweeted by President Donald Trump, quotes a sole anonymous source claiming that during the December meeting “the Russians broached the idea of using a secure line between the Trump administration and Russia, not Kushner.” The source for the story was only broadly described as being “familiar the matter,” without further identifying detail attributing this source to the White House, the Intelligence Community or some personal friend. By comparison, the reports from WaPo and NY Times were more detailed in description and numerous in support.
“The idea of a permanent back channel was never discussed, according to the source. Instead, only a one-off for a call about Syria was raised in the conversation,” Fox News also reported.
First of all, the source for this story might want to alert the White House that Kushner hadn’t discussed a backchannel with Kislyak: on Tuesday, Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox & Friends to defend setting up a backchannel. When asked about the Fox News story defending Kushner, Conway declined to comment.
The report’s exoneration of Kushner — citing a single unnamed source and published without a by-line — raised the eyebrows of a number of commentators for it’s contradiction of The Washington Post and others:
Forget the pun, I’m focused on the sub-line, contra WaPo reporting. Article on Fox site doesn’t have a byline. Why? https://t.co/7OkAR2VOnY https://t.co/sRHoaUgQz5
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 30, 2017
NPR’s David Folkenflik reached out to Fox News, who told him that Catherine Herridge was the lead reporter on the story.
2/ Fox News’ Refet Kaplan tells NPR that Catherine Herridge, listed at bottom was lead reporter & after vetting, others wrote from her notes
— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) May 30, 2017
Watch Herridge report the story on-air on Fox above.
Folkenflik went so far as to suggest that the source of the report could well be Fox News CEO Rupert Murdoch.
7/ You know who talks to Kushner as well as Trump? Fox News acting CEO & effective owner Rupert Murdoch.
— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) May 30, 2017
Murdoch — who is in frequent contact with both Kushner and Trump — has been known to pass on pieces of political gossip to reporters at Fox:
8/ Murdoch loves gathering and disseminating political gossip to editors et al. One of his delights as a newspaper proprietor.
— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) May 30, 2017
In response to Folkenflik, Fox News stated that they stand by the report, which was “vetted in advance and approved per the normal editorial chain of command.”
Fox News may be standing by the story, but for now, it exists alone amongst a number of other reports as the sole defense of Murdoch’s ally in the White House.
